BEIJING - The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China's biggest commercial lender, aims to increase its loans to small and micro-sized businesses by at least 100 billion yuan ($14.9 billion) this year.

Nearly half of the target has already been fulfilled so far, according to ICBC president Gu Shu.

Of the newly-added loans to small and micro-sized firms, around half were extended through online credit channels, Gu said.

At the end of 2018, ICBC loans to small and micro-sized firms increased 49.2 billion yuan, or 18.1 percent from the beginning of the year, while the number of these borrowers increased by 91,000 to 308,000, data from the bank showed.

Loans to private enterprises also grew, with outstanding loans up by more than 110 billion yuan from a year earlier to 1.78 trillion yuan by the end of last year.